“Hail and fire!—and the trees, and the green grass burnt up and destroyed!—the sun and the moon, the day and the night smitten into one blackness! We will have no more virtues!—no more hopes of Heaven! Honour shall be as a rag on a fool’s back, and Gold shall be the pulse of Life! Gold, gold, gold! Fight for it, steal it!—pile it up, hoard it, count it, hug it, eat it, sleep with it, die with it! Lo, I give it to you in millions, packed down and pressed together in full & overflowing measure—I scatter it among you even as a destroying rain!
“Build with it, buy with it, gamble with it, sell your souls and bodies for it,—there are devils enough in Hell to drive all your bargains! Sneer at truth, defeat justice, snatch virtue’s mask to cover vice, drug conscience, feed and fatten yourselves with the lusts of animalism till the cancer of sin makes of you a putrefaction and an open sore in the sight of the sun! Come, learn from me such wisdom as shall compass your own destruction! Unto you shall be unlocked the under-mysteries of Nature, and the secrets of the upper air,—you shall bend the lightning to your service, and the lightning shall slay!—you shall hollow out the ground and delve a swift road through it for yourselves in fancied proud security, and the earth shall crumble in upon you as a grave, and the cities you have built shall crush you in their falling!—you shall seek to bind the winds, and sail the skies, and Death shall wait for you in the clouds, and exult in your downfall! Come, tie your pigmy chariots to the sun, and so be drawn into its flaming vortex of perdition! All Creation shall rejoice to be cleansed from the pollution of your presence, for God hath sworn to give unto Me all who reject Him, and the Hour of the Gift has come!”
The ripple of the sweet waters of refreshment, the murmur of cool grasses waving in the fields of peace.
Still faster flew the Car,—red meteors flashed in its course—and the Phantom shapes which followed its flight crowded together in an ever-thickening, ever-darkening multitude, while bright stars were shaken down from heaven like snowflakes whirling in a winter blast. And, mingling with the grinding roar of its wheels came other sounds,—sounds of fierce laughter and loud cursing,—yells and shrieks and groans of torture,—the screams of the suffering, the sobs of the dying,—and as the Fiend drove on with swiftly quickening fury, men and women and little children were trampled down one upon another and killed in their thousands, and the Car was splashed thick with human blood. And He who was clothed in black and crowned with fire, shouted exultingly as He dashed along over massacred heaps of dead nations and the broken remnants of thrones.
